1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:07,460 Hello, everyone. I'm Dr. Laura Varnam from University College Oxford, and the proper start of this lecture has, 2 00:00:07,470 --> 00:00:14,730 of course, to be [Old English]. 3 00:00:14,730 --> 00:00:22,440 [Old English]. 4 00:00:22,440 --> 00:00:28,010 [Old English]. 5 00:00:28,500 --> 00:00:37,940 [Old English]. 6 00:00:37,950 --> 00:00:41,970 [Old English]. 7 00:00:47,360 --> 00:00:56,890 That was the opening of Beowulf, as I'm sure you all know, and the opening of Tolkien's posthumously published a translation on the slide. 8 00:00:57,790 --> 00:01:05,959 Tolkien, of course, always reciting Beowulf in his lectures, always if not as audibly as perhaps I've done just now. 9 00:01:05,960 --> 00:01:15,710 Now, I would just really like to put some old English into the room to really hear the alliterative metre more like masonry than music, 10 00:01:15,710 --> 00:01:17,030 as Tolkien described it. 11 00:01:17,360 --> 00:01:27,379 Just a whole round the grandeur, the weight, the seriousness about the subject matter and the style, which were two elements of the really massive, 12 00:01:27,380 --> 00:01:39,920 very deeply hokey way to lives is a thrill to be getting is talk today as possible 50th anniversary celebrations at Torquay in Oxford as 13 00:01:39,920 --> 00:01:49,360 Reynolds Oxford and I spent a great deal of my time teaching Bible and old English literature to I to address some of your comments. 14 00:01:50,120 --> 00:02:00,380 It's a particularly fitting to propose Tolkien's legacy as a valuable, solid translator and created responded to the public as the topic of my talk. 15 00:02:01,520 --> 00:02:12,860 Like many of my colleagues and students, my sort of medievalist origin story, as it were going back to Tolkien, my dad, who is in the audience, 16 00:02:13,460 --> 00:02:23,300 is a huge Tolkien fan, and I read The Lord of the Rings in my early teens and then talk about some characters with my dad. 17 00:02:23,810 --> 00:02:30,620 We'd look up all the monsters and police in Tolkien, blistering the scholar in training that I was. 18 00:02:31,010 --> 00:02:36,400 And so when I first encountered Beowulf and medieval texts like So Great, 19 00:02:36,410 --> 00:02:41,810 The Green Knight as a student, I thought, Oh, yes, I know this world already. 20 00:02:42,050 --> 00:02:45,260 I've been here before via Middle-Earth. 21 00:02:46,160 --> 00:02:49,820 But as well as teaching, I'm also a practising poet. 22 00:02:50,150 --> 00:02:54,830 I'm currently writing a poetry collection inspired by the women of Beowulf, 23 00:02:55,130 --> 00:03:00,500 particularly Grendel's mother, and as well as reshaping the field of Beowulf criticism. 24 00:03:00,860 --> 00:03:12,200 Tolkien also, I think, gave us permission to respond creatively today and to offer imaginative retellings as modes of reading fables, 25 00:03:12,200 --> 00:03:21,650 as ways of thinking with and about the poem. And even in an awful time, I'll say a little bit about Tolkien, the middle modernity, Let's roll. 26 00:03:22,640 --> 00:03:30,950 And there are four interrelated texts that I'm going to draw on today that for me form the basis of Tolkien's legacy 27 00:03:30,950 --> 00:03:39,320 as an able scholar and of course the field changing 1936 British Academy lecture did on the 25th of November. 28 00:03:39,590 --> 00:03:43,640 You know, we're not sort of far away from from that specific anniversary date. 29 00:03:44,300 --> 00:03:52,550 The book was published just by all the monsters and critics, but it's so shortened version of the battle. 30 00:03:52,580 --> 00:03:56,210 Of course, it's going to be edited by Mike Stroud. 31 00:03:57,110 --> 00:04:07,900 This also told his essay on translating by being treated to a new edition in 1940, and it also drew on material from the Bible, 32 00:04:07,910 --> 00:04:13,970 the critics essays, and then his posthumously published by The Wall translation commentary, 33 00:04:14,210 --> 00:04:24,830 which also is important as a final folktale won the title so much so an ambulance I I'm supposed to do 34 00:04:24,830 --> 00:04:31,280 in my lecture is to explore the ways in which Tolkien's ideas shaped our understandings of the poem, 35 00:04:31,580 --> 00:04:37,760 its preoccupations and style by way of modern translators and creative writers 36 00:04:38,120 --> 00:04:43,540 who consults at night equals its contributions to the museum as a talking. 37 00:04:43,550 --> 00:04:46,970 Michael It and so I'm going to talk a bit about the Scottish poet, actually. 38 00:04:46,970 --> 00:04:53,000 Morgan The Irish poet Seamus Heaney, the American writer and translator Maria Hadley. 39 00:04:53,750 --> 00:04:58,819 And just listing the places that those different writers come from reminds us 40 00:04:58,820 --> 00:05:04,580 of one of the really extraordinary things about how it speaks across oceans, 41 00:05:04,820 --> 00:05:08,540 across nations, even if not always comfortably. 42 00:05:08,870 --> 00:05:13,730 A wonderful fact to the yellow dog or former days of Scandinavia. 43 00:05:13,820 --> 00:05:20,719 Legendary chaos is able and really marvellously to look forward to our present moments and the present 44 00:05:20,720 --> 00:05:29,690 concerns from conflict and war to toxic masculinity and female power from fantastical creatures like tigers. 45 00:05:30,110 --> 00:05:36,739 Very attractive dress to lecture today about soaking wet, put on national rituals. 46 00:05:36,740 --> 00:05:46,120 Our dragons do all to human, says Reading mothers speech is a commonly made bible, and in his essay on five. 47 00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:50,200 Let's hope he also has recourse today as an example. 48 00:05:50,620 --> 00:05:59,440 He always wants to admit as possible in the various motifs we might find in various story quotes that remain still a point too often forgotten. 49 00:05:59,920 --> 00:06:07,200 Not just the facts produced now by these old things in the stories as they are talking. 50 00:06:07,210 --> 00:06:13,920 Talk to us about the kind of stew and bones that we find in what turns the culture of story. 51 00:06:14,260 --> 00:06:17,830 And these things have an impact beyond merely a source study. 52 00:06:18,460 --> 00:06:22,560 He says they, quote, Open a door on other times. 53 00:06:22,750 --> 00:06:28,480 And if we possibly know only for a moment, we stand outside our own time. 54 00:06:28,780 --> 00:06:36,189 Outside time itself. Maybe this is not a place that sometimes seems to sound sort of outside it. 55 00:06:36,190 --> 00:06:44,880 Time, is it? So this is a great place to open that door, its fairy story and set into talkies World of Babel. 56 00:06:46,030 --> 00:06:52,599 Now, it's no understatement to say that Tolkien's lecture, the Waltzer and the critics was all changing, 57 00:06:52,600 --> 00:06:57,910 and it continues to have the most profound impact on us to this day. 58 00:06:58,630 --> 00:07:05,140 Michael That's why he writes in his edition of Bible from Chris is that all the English scholars don't agree on very much. 59 00:07:05,380 --> 00:07:13,630 But one thing they do agree on is that most of the critics is the single most important critical essay ever written about Bible. 60 00:07:14,140 --> 00:07:17,560 He calls it a watershed, an origin, a turning point. 61 00:07:18,040 --> 00:07:24,340 And I still give it to my students as the first piece of criticism to read when they encountered the poems. 62 00:07:25,300 --> 00:07:34,480 When Tolkien gave his lecture, he was approaching the poet not just as a scholar, but as a literary critic, and I suggest as a creative writer. 63 00:07:35,380 --> 00:07:41,410 He famously observed that of all Beowulf, we all know that he addressed one rich in many departments. 64 00:07:41,560 --> 00:07:45,250 It was especially cool anymore, he said. 65 00:07:45,520 --> 00:07:51,190 It is poor in criticism. Criticism? It is directed to the understanding of a poem. 66 00:07:51,400 --> 00:07:57,070 I suppose it has been said of Beowulf itself that its weakness weakness lies in placing 67 00:07:57,070 --> 00:08:02,140 the other important things at the centre and the important things only outer edges. 68 00:08:02,680 --> 00:08:07,900 This is one of the opinions that I wish specially to consider. I think it profoundly are true of the poet. 69 00:08:08,110 --> 00:08:12,909 The striking issue of the literature about it by all has been used as a career 70 00:08:12,910 --> 00:08:17,980 factor probably far more assiduously than it has been studied as a work of art. 71 00:08:19,330 --> 00:08:22,540 After all, he Beowulf is a work of art, 72 00:08:22,870 --> 00:08:29,529 not a text that only belonged as a chapter to all the historians who are excavating it on 73 00:08:29,530 --> 00:08:34,720 linguistic fossils and hidden legends in the classical tradition that came before him. 74 00:08:35,110 --> 00:08:44,440 Tolkien lamented that Oasis poetry was usually forgotten, occasionally admitted by a side or sometimes dismissed on the doorstep. 75 00:08:45,040 --> 00:08:52,450 And while unexpected, guests on the doorstep, whether bearing party invitations or not, can cause all kinds of trouble. 76 00:08:52,930 --> 00:09:00,130 Tolkien wanted to welcome radio retreat back into the audience, back into the house of Beowulf. 77 00:09:00,550 --> 00:09:09,940 The problem is, he said, so interesting as poetry in places so powerful that this quite overshadows or content 78 00:09:10,420 --> 00:09:15,280 as much as might be interested inside the legendary identity of its digital hedgehog. 79 00:09:16,150 --> 00:09:20,800 And that power comes from a sound of the having from hearing it at all. 80 00:09:21,620 --> 00:09:26,080 And if I need to call it a way to draw archetypes for a very valuable individual, 81 00:09:26,440 --> 00:09:31,030 I'd really recommend looking up Benjamin Bachmann's performance on YouTube. 82 00:09:31,470 --> 00:09:35,110 If he does the first third of the poem. He's a medieval music specialist. 83 00:09:35,110 --> 00:09:39,160 He performs it with the harp completely off the top of his head. It's absolutely destroyed. 84 00:09:39,670 --> 00:09:44,770 And the video up at the moment have subtitles, so you can really enjoy that in all its glory. 85 00:09:45,190 --> 00:09:50,740 So is the sound of the poem, but also the story at the centre Babel device. 86 00:09:51,580 --> 00:09:56,920 Now Tolkien statements about what we find at the centre I'm on the margins of the poem casts a 87 00:09:56,920 --> 00:10:03,780 very long shadow and in some ways it's even suggested that the focus has all to all the other way, 88 00:10:04,270 --> 00:10:11,290 and it can sometimes be challenging to interest students imaginary figures or strange names like rugelach or various tribes, 89 00:10:11,290 --> 00:10:16,149 like the Visions and the piece of art and get you started on the whole Swedish Jesus conception. 90 00:10:16,150 --> 00:10:26,620 I'm still unsure of myself, but I think the critique of Tolkien's refocusing of our attention sometimes what this means is points. 91 00:10:27,070 --> 00:10:30,550 Tolkien is trying to replace one area of focus with the other. 92 00:10:30,880 --> 00:10:37,030 He's trying to redress the balance of sorting criticism at that point as he recognised himself. 93 00:10:37,510 --> 00:10:41,890 It is more than its plot. It's the cycle that's also crucial. 94 00:10:42,280 --> 00:10:45,550 I'll come back to that some of his remarks on translation. 95 00:10:46,180 --> 00:10:53,290 He said, for example, quote, The comparison of skeleton plots is simply not a critical process at all. 96 00:10:53,710 --> 00:11:02,830 And what you have is a problem where we try and summarise the story of a particular group of people before I met the children or young adults. 97 00:11:03,400 --> 00:11:13,300 One of the most iconic economies of all the on and after translation is versions for the children in children's literature versions. 98 00:11:13,780 --> 00:11:17,860 And so yes, I always asked about these three monster fights, 99 00:11:18,370 --> 00:11:25,330 but it is also about who is made up of all the regulatory material with which those stories are interlaced. 100 00:11:25,570 --> 00:11:32,140 And that texture is very much the sort of idea of as a text. 101 00:11:33,040 --> 00:11:42,970 So to get a flavour of Tolkien's appreciation of the monsters, both as flesh and blood creatures and potential symbolic cause of meaning, 102 00:11:43,540 --> 00:11:47,320 this is how he describes Grendel, the Dragons, in his selection. 103 00:11:47,890 --> 00:11:52,900 He says Grendel inhabits the physical world and eats the flesh and loves of men. 104 00:11:53,170 --> 00:12:00,520 He enters the houses by the doors and doors are always dangerous places in Tolkien, unimaginable danger. 105 00:12:01,060 --> 00:12:05,130 The dragon wields a physical fire, covetous gold, not souls. 106 00:12:05,380 --> 00:12:15,220 He is slain with iron in his balance. And Tolkien is especially receptive to the imaginative power of dragons as well he should be. 107 00:12:15,940 --> 00:12:21,219 He says. Dragon is no idle fancy, whatever may be his origins. 108 00:12:21,220 --> 00:12:28,180 In fact, the invention of the dragon, the legend is a potent creation of man's imagination, which is significant. 109 00:12:28,420 --> 00:12:30,430 But as far as it goes, 110 00:12:31,540 --> 00:12:39,880 and I think without this recognition of the monster's innate glamour and glamour is a word that comes back to the medieval word, real magic. 111 00:12:40,420 --> 00:12:50,630 You know, I think we wouldn't have this incredible tour de force of of a description from Seamus Heaney in the introduction to his 1999 translation. 112 00:12:51,070 --> 00:12:59,250 I think it's absolutely fantastic. He says Grendel comes alive in the reader's imagination as a kind of dark breath in the dark, 113 00:12:59,590 --> 00:13:06,640 a fear of collision with some hard bones and immensely strong Android fright or mixture of Caliban Hoplite, 114 00:13:07,270 --> 00:13:15,100 while his mother too has a definite brute battering about her creature, slouch and lunge on land, sea, all swept in the water. 115 00:13:15,550 --> 00:13:18,880 She nevertheless retains a certain no strangeness. 116 00:13:19,420 --> 00:13:26,020 And if the dragon he writes, there's something glorious in the way he manifests himself a 4th of July, 117 00:13:26,020 --> 00:13:29,350 a Folger's fire working its path across the night sky. 118 00:13:29,800 --> 00:13:34,850 He is at once a stratum of the earth and a streamer in the air no painted dragon, 119 00:13:34,850 --> 00:13:40,329 but a figure of real American power dream like power, one that could easily survive. 120 00:13:40,330 --> 00:13:44,020 The prejudice rises, but we mention also the word dragon. 121 00:13:45,820 --> 00:13:53,320 And he describes he talks about Tolkien prophecies and critics Messiah essay in his introduction as epoch making. 122 00:13:53,890 --> 00:14:01,570 He argues that talking about assumes that the poet has felt his way through the inherited 123 00:14:01,570 --> 00:14:10,200 material and felt as he's stressed that he serves his way through this inhabited material. 124 00:14:10,480 --> 00:14:16,299 The fabulous elements in the traditional accounts of a heroic past by a combination of creative intuition, 125 00:14:16,300 --> 00:14:20,560 a conscious structuring, a derived unity of effects and a balance order. 126 00:14:21,070 --> 00:14:22,660 So he assumed, in other words, 127 00:14:22,660 --> 00:14:31,030 that the Battle of Poets was an imaginative project rather than information derived from 19th century folklore and philology. 128 00:14:31,870 --> 00:14:39,960 And he needs identification. A feeling I think is really crucial, and it's something that both Tolkien I'm about in the share. 129 00:14:40,270 --> 00:14:48,520 Both of them have thoughts that right through this material and that attitude to it is shaped by the emotions that it stimulates. 130 00:14:49,030 --> 00:14:52,030 We see this then also supported what, for example, 131 00:14:52,030 --> 00:14:59,110 Tolkien describes the Christian Beowulf poet's attitude to the paper, the cast of his heroic characters. 132 00:14:59,560 --> 00:15:09,520 Tolkien cites the quote, The shadow of the paper path despair only as a mood, as an intense emotion of regret is still there in the poem. 133 00:15:09,880 --> 00:15:13,960 The work of defeated Follett in this world is deeply felt. 134 00:15:14,830 --> 00:15:18,940 Tolkien identifies the by as emotional engagement with his material. 135 00:15:19,570 --> 00:15:24,100 Tolkien's own desires and dissatisfactions also come into play, 136 00:15:24,340 --> 00:15:32,950 both explicitly implicitly in his discussion of and response to the drama in Bibles and the essay on three stories. 137 00:15:33,340 --> 00:15:40,540 He admits that as a child, and I absolutely am with India, I desire dragons with a profound desire. 138 00:15:41,080 --> 00:15:45,980 But Tolkien admitted they might say, Look what he did not wish to happen in the neighbourhood intruding. 139 00:15:46,120 --> 00:15:49,390 From my relatively safe world, I think I'd be fine with that. 140 00:15:51,320 --> 00:15:56,470 But he admits that the world contained even the imagination of athletes not involved. 141 00:15:56,650 --> 00:16:05,450 But it was richer and more beautiful at whatever cost of peril, but regrettably encompassed with it. 142 00:16:05,560 --> 00:16:10,990 I'm talking from the Bible in one state and one reluctant to criticise. 143 00:16:11,110 --> 00:16:19,960 He did say in the notes of the critics, saying that the problem is not to be blamed for being a problem, but rather for not being broken enough. 144 00:16:20,650 --> 00:16:29,320 He says there are in the power of very touches of the right kind in which the dragon is real, one with a peaceful life of thought of his own. 145 00:16:29,740 --> 00:16:33,580 But the Tolkien conception noble approach is to call it us, 146 00:16:33,940 --> 00:16:40,560 rather the Draper personification of malice, the greed and destruction, the evil side of own life. 147 00:16:41,300 --> 00:16:44,560 Oh, that's all he does. Well, for the Bible. This is what it should be. 148 00:16:45,520 --> 00:16:57,290 But his frustration had already produced a creative results whereby Tolkien imagined exactly the right kind of targeting of all people again. 149 00:16:57,940 --> 00:17:04,060 It's also the critics like Tolkien have set off his manuscript of The Hobbit. 150 00:17:04,330 --> 00:17:07,870 And of course, that story contains no other than small talking. 151 00:17:08,140 --> 00:17:13,810 Weirdly, Dawkins, who is more than a match for Batman or indeed the name of a Bible, 152 00:17:14,140 --> 00:17:23,110 and lots of critics have pointed out the ways in which the Battle of the Dragon on the story sort of slip into smiles, 153 00:17:23,110 --> 00:17:26,950 unconscious in the practical inside information. 154 00:17:27,610 --> 00:17:31,990 But Bilbo has entered the mountain as smoke is described as having, quote, 155 00:17:32,290 --> 00:17:43,750 an uneasy dream in which a warrior altogether insignificant in size but provided with a bitter sword and great courage, fitted most unpleasantly. 156 00:17:43,990 --> 00:17:56,560 So somehow is having this dream like a kind of ghost story or a premonition of Bilbo about to about to enter the mountain of Tolkien's small ways. 157 00:17:56,680 --> 00:18:03,839 The other big problem that arises from Beowulf in the published version of the monsters and critics, 158 00:18:03,840 --> 00:18:10,240 such Tolkien called Tolkien comments rather obliquely the quote more than an old poem in recent years, 159 00:18:11,110 --> 00:18:19,269 since by overstate so often the dominion of the students origins, use of poetry has been inspired by Beowulf, but no less. 160 00:18:19,270 --> 00:18:27,590 I know why it goes to. So he's recognising that strategy's already inspiring new creative writings. 161 00:18:28,270 --> 00:18:33,640 And in the original he doesn't say more about that in the published version of what actually in the original 162 00:18:33,910 --> 00:18:41,469 manuscript that Michael Brown's has edited the two versions of so brilliantly and is very critical of Tolkien, 163 00:18:41,470 --> 00:18:51,070 including the two poems that he alluded to here, what is by himself and is the you want a gold out of the London poem. 164 00:18:51,340 --> 00:19:00,390 And that's a that's a line from Babel describing the gold of man of law that is wild around like outer, 165 00:19:00,400 --> 00:19:03,460 which means something like incantation or spells. 166 00:19:04,650 --> 00:19:11,310 The other poem that Tolkien alludes to is by his friend The thought of Magic with C.S. Lewis supposed Dragon. 167 00:19:12,310 --> 00:19:15,370 I want to talk about those thoughts in detail. 168 00:19:15,880 --> 00:19:20,050 But if you're if you are interested in the appendix in Holy [INAUDIBLE], 169 00:19:20,050 --> 00:19:26,680 these are the recently published translation available has a fantastic description of how that poem 170 00:19:27,310 --> 00:19:33,640 people right in the 1920s and then works on and revised the role of that poem in developing his ideas. 171 00:19:35,590 --> 00:19:46,450 And it's a really fascinating question. But I do want to quote the way in which Tolkien plans to introduce the poems in my own writings essays. 172 00:19:47,050 --> 00:19:55,540 He said, I will quote you, though this may seem an unpalatable digression in the amount of support by all poets to modern poets on the docket, 173 00:19:55,980 --> 00:19:59,560 the two together for all their defects, especially in the first, 174 00:19:59,610 --> 00:20:09,490 I suppose so seems to me more important for that criticism for which they say when all that very much has been written for that purpose, 175 00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:14,230 I think something she said. 176 00:20:14,650 --> 00:20:24,040 But it shows how Tolkien really believes that creative results can and should be important for approaching the thinking about it, 177 00:20:24,040 --> 00:20:29,640 for reading, for the power in 1979 Tolkien's art. 178 00:20:29,860 --> 00:20:39,219 But I also James Schultz notes that he told his prose non-fiction his monster is the critic solely prefers history and philology on approach. 179 00:20:39,220 --> 00:20:45,620 So I'll say that in contrast to what she calls the alive and joyful imagination of the artist, he. 180 00:20:46,290 --> 00:20:51,860 With him. Tolkien identified this alive and joyful imagination of the artist. 181 00:20:52,560 --> 00:20:56,940 It's exactly what we see applied in Tolkien spiral Criticism. 182 00:20:57,810 --> 00:21:03,450 Let me give you an example of one of my favourite moments in Tolkien commentary on Beowulf. 183 00:21:03,960 --> 00:21:09,480 Translation is this discussion of the introduction of the dragon and the back story of the trash. 184 00:21:10,320 --> 00:21:14,399 Not talking perceptively Comments in the notes. 185 00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:24,450 I think the Bible operation talking Tolkien's Thomas Tolkien's translation available I think is amazing. 186 00:21:24,600 --> 00:21:31,589 It's a fantastic piece of work, really very useful for me and a real kind of treasure in wrapping up with all the commentaries, 187 00:21:31,590 --> 00:21:35,160 all talking about the fact that it's just fascinating. 188 00:21:35,970 --> 00:21:43,470 And one of the things that he picks out in the introduction of the Dragon episode is the 189 00:21:43,470 --> 00:21:48,120 way in which the introduction of both the thief who steals from the dragon and the dragon, 190 00:21:48,420 --> 00:21:51,540 he's treated by the Bible in a very moving way. 191 00:21:51,810 --> 00:21:58,530 And it's remarkable how he says, for the sin of the show, both the the wretched fugitive and the dragon, 192 00:21:59,160 --> 00:22:07,020 and explains that the effect of the poet's kind of serpentine introduction of the fact is equal right but wrong. 193 00:22:07,020 --> 00:22:12,330 That is, quote, characteristic of old English as we know it as a whole. 194 00:22:12,780 --> 00:22:19,679 That the scene in the past few months into an elegy in retrospect on the Forgotten Lords who 195 00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:25,140 place that gold into the Lord and then died one by one until it was in fact most of us. 196 00:22:26,100 --> 00:22:30,780 Right. So almost as soon as we hear about the dragon in the fact of the whole world, 197 00:22:31,290 --> 00:22:36,650 we get the events of Last Survivor, how the treasure came to be in the mines in which it's found. 198 00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:46,259 Well, Tolkien, we use that this quote occupies the emotional space between the pondering up the hold and the curiously vivid 199 00:22:46,260 --> 00:22:53,460 and perceptive lines of the dragon snuffling in absolute rage and injured greed when he saw this upset. 200 00:22:54,030 --> 00:23:00,420 And for me, this feeling that he's created for all the treasure and a sense of its art history, 201 00:23:01,030 --> 00:23:08,609 what he says is what raises the whole thing right above a mere treasure story and just another dragon tale, he concludes. 202 00:23:08,610 --> 00:23:13,860 The whole thing is sombre, tragic, sinister and curiously real. 203 00:23:15,030 --> 00:23:18,810 I hope he opens up a real empathy in this reading, 204 00:23:19,500 --> 00:23:30,070 and it offers a cool counterpoint to some of his rather more dismissive comments about the evil monsters and critics, as they once had gotten, 205 00:23:30,170 --> 00:23:38,670 wasn't frightfully good of me, and it shows how imagination and compassion or fellow feeling can lead to productive on attentive, 206 00:23:38,670 --> 00:23:43,230 close readings of the original power because of reading spirit as close to it. 207 00:23:43,710 --> 00:23:52,780 Rather than taking this away and more from places in a 20th and 21st century have also responded to 208 00:23:52,780 --> 00:23:58,290 the heroic feelings about the Beowulf poet's treatment of the monsters within that translation. 209 00:23:58,290 --> 00:24:04,840 So that's why the Battle for the Dragon. A particular case in point. 210 00:24:04,890 --> 00:24:14,760 Here is the American translator on Hadley, whose new translation was published in 2020 after the 2018 novel adaptation of the Story. 211 00:24:15,090 --> 00:24:23,900 Meanwhile, as the title character demonstrates, Headley is interested in babel's real life or woman of water scandal. 212 00:24:24,690 --> 00:24:33,509 But the former me, a wife, only a half sister, Headley's feminist perspective on the power of one major gap and sulking, 213 00:24:33,510 --> 00:24:37,550 small city critics aside, is Grendel's mother herself. 214 00:24:38,250 --> 00:24:43,550 Tolkien says that he will quite confine himself mainly to the monsters Scrabble. 215 00:24:45,090 --> 00:24:51,420 And if you read the essay without knowing, you might have no idea that it even exists. 216 00:24:52,020 --> 00:24:56,460 Unfortunately, Tolkien's empathy for the dragon does not extend to Grant his mother. 217 00:24:57,060 --> 00:25:00,270 He doesn't even see her as structurally significant. 218 00:25:00,660 --> 00:25:06,180 He argues that the poem is about an opposition of ends and beginnings. 219 00:25:06,660 --> 00:25:09,330 Contrast the description of two moments in a great life, 220 00:25:09,330 --> 00:25:17,570 rising and setting the elaboration of the ancient and intensely moving contrast between youth and age, first achievement and death. 221 00:25:18,070 --> 00:25:24,390 And he says that he thinks the dragon is a fitting end for Beowulf, the hero, just as Grendel is the perfect beginning. 222 00:25:25,020 --> 00:25:31,559 Now I was talking about her mother is the perfect middle and surprising for an essay that 223 00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:38,160 is so interested in sentence that Tolkien neglects the female monster of the whole story. 224 00:25:39,090 --> 00:25:42,540 He only mentions in the essays Appendix on Religious titles. 225 00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:47,280 Firstly, to note that both Grendel and his mother according all her devils. 226 00:25:47,580 --> 00:25:52,620 And then, drawing on Rendell's physicality as a monster, he cites in brackets. 227 00:25:52,950 --> 00:25:59,489 Grendel's mother is naturally described separately, treated in precisely the terms she is with Edo's. 228 00:25:59,490 --> 00:26:06,540 All that with such a woman, a noble woman, and he says, rising to the inhuman. 229 00:26:06,570 --> 00:26:13,070 Mia we will go and work some of those terms later on. 230 00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:24,060 Sometimes Tolkien's own translations really amplify this idea with the of the inhuman sometimes in the way that I think is not quite not in the text. 231 00:26:25,110 --> 00:26:34,170 Thus Tolkien defends his argument to all the proxy forces by asserting that we do not deny the worth of the hero by accepting Revel in the Dragon. 232 00:26:34,860 --> 00:26:44,970 I think when it comes to trying to smother it, maybe that we have to slightly recalibrate what we think about Beowulf invades her home. 233 00:26:45,090 --> 00:26:50,190 Just as Randall invaded Eros, I was pointed out in a memorable essay by old English. 234 00:26:50,850 --> 00:26:53,550 Trilling Well, I always wanted to fight Grendel. 235 00:26:53,640 --> 00:27:04,110 We all absolutely went up to the box to fight Grendel's mother, despite the fact that apparently her wolf is the less because she is a woman. 236 00:27:05,070 --> 00:27:12,720 And the marginalisation of Rendell's love is a major driver of the power empathy that we find in the way that we see translation. 237 00:27:13,620 --> 00:27:20,880 And in fact, in her introduction, she begins by declaring the, quote, Love of God with Beowulf began with Grendel's mother. 238 00:27:21,210 --> 00:27:30,390 The moment I encountered her in an illustrated compendium of Monsters, a slithery greenish entity someday naked in a swamp, knight in hand. 239 00:27:31,470 --> 00:27:35,050 And how do you have to have said enough? 240 00:27:35,070 --> 00:27:39,090 Does he have to write it without the surrounding cast of characters? 241 00:27:39,270 --> 00:27:46,920 Randall and Beowulf. He is a queen, just a woman with a weapon all by herself in the centre of the page. 242 00:27:47,310 --> 00:27:52,710 And perhaps she then describes the shock that she felt years later when she realised that, quote, 243 00:27:53,190 --> 00:28:02,100 Mother was not only not for the main event, but also to so many people an extension of Grendel rather than the character herself. 244 00:28:02,850 --> 00:28:10,980 She isn't even really quite an extension of Randall in invoking blessing and in the creative. 245 00:28:11,100 --> 00:28:20,000 It's all his creative texts and finds at the end of a published translation in the folktale. 246 00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:24,749 So much so in one of the versions. The mother of the monster. 247 00:28:24,750 --> 00:28:31,829 Exactly Grinder For the monster, Grendel warned his mother doesn't come to take vengeance for her son. 248 00:28:31,830 --> 00:28:39,900 But if you have a other version, she does. But in the seconds of the two lines about all that Tolkien writes, 249 00:28:40,950 --> 00:28:44,729 that I think was a really fascinating moment because he gives Grendel's mother a 250 00:28:44,730 --> 00:28:50,400 voice and she almost seems to the prophesy the fall of Denmark through a compromise. 251 00:28:50,510 --> 00:28:55,320 So I think Tolkien is starting to move toward rethinking his approach toward this mother. 252 00:28:56,670 --> 00:29:02,610 A little thing that Maria doesn't have any particular attention to in her introduction. 253 00:29:03,250 --> 00:29:12,620 Is the tone of the talk you identified in all of the in the question what does much of Michael's honour and that is for the word of. 254 00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:25,150 It's just one of the most debated tones for the destruction of not in the power to look at it just in by with an all black man. 255 00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:28,570 I frequently used to refer to a formidable opponent. 256 00:29:28,930 --> 00:29:35,110 So what is it like 1259 of the poem Grendel's mother is referred to as It is often brief. 257 00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:43,030 It refers to a noblewoman queen, while theatrical does and which makes woman so happy, 258 00:29:43,030 --> 00:29:53,530 she suggests we should talk like this formidable noblewoman role, as we see in quite a scholarly edition wretch, or also a woman. 259 00:29:55,210 --> 00:30:02,530 In his posthumously published translation, Toki translates over US bears destroyed in the form of a woman. 260 00:30:03,190 --> 00:30:10,030 I think he's using female form of ogre that because he uses Ogre to describe Grendel earlier in his translation. 261 00:30:10,870 --> 00:30:19,659 And I do think that fierce captures the power of of a proxy destroyer makes translation a little bit more pejorative. 262 00:30:19,660 --> 00:30:30,250 But I think he captures the force a great deal softer when you translate lines 58 to 90 grams work here with Mystic, 263 00:30:30,580 --> 00:30:33,610 He comes out as the monstrous woman of the sea. 264 00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:40,510 She will fish out of the deep. I'm assuming he's getting monstrous from mating. 265 00:30:40,780 --> 00:30:47,540 And so from Mighty Lear wife is the woman of the male waters throughout a guy who is. 266 00:30:48,430 --> 00:30:51,450 Is this a disaster? What is a feminine holocaust? 267 00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:59,290 Describes often translated as Wolf of the deep wolves are often used as symbols of outlaws in old English literature. 268 00:31:00,070 --> 00:31:09,280 According to the dictionary of Old English long term enemies, a cursed female creature of the deep because, well, it means evil. 269 00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:16,659 Cursed went wrong. Hadley refers to Grendel as an outlaw in her exceptional warrior woman. 270 00:31:16,660 --> 00:31:27,040 In her translation of Ten Line, here she translates one exclusive note Queen The Mighty Me A life I take, 271 00:31:27,410 --> 00:31:33,580 said Knightly, to refer both the thought on his walk walked the territory for 50 years. 272 00:31:34,150 --> 00:31:42,910 Because what I would like to do as king and one of the things that I've been exploring in my 273 00:31:43,180 --> 00:31:48,880 work on ground with some of the other women in the poem is thinking about her as a queen. 274 00:31:49,780 --> 00:31:58,780 She she rules her whole. She operates as kind of anti queen figure, just as the dragon is a kind of abdicate what she calls his holds his gold. 275 00:31:59,950 --> 00:32:05,530 And a lot of Grendel's mother is in many ways isolated to be the it she does share 276 00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:10,690 in a kind of emotional community with the other queens in battle because she, 277 00:32:10,690 --> 00:32:14,200 too, is a grieving mother as many of the other women are. 278 00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:22,780 And the other thing, I think that how do you what do you do with the pieces here is pushing back at the idea of her being coerced. 279 00:32:23,140 --> 00:32:27,100 We know that gradually stopped because he is descendants of K, the first murderer, 280 00:32:27,340 --> 00:32:33,430 but ultimately it's the murderous actions of men that drove Randall's mother into this tormented family tree. 281 00:32:33,850 --> 00:32:40,660 And it also renounces the girl's mother, doesn't leave and go on the night he rampages. 282 00:32:41,110 --> 00:32:44,350 So does I get the sense that she sort of keeps it herself? 283 00:32:44,410 --> 00:32:51,670 Minds are ambitious until she's required to take revenge for Gravel's death in lieu of him, the father to do so. 284 00:32:52,910 --> 00:32:56,140 The grumbles. All the space is invaded by rivals. 285 00:32:56,650 --> 00:33:05,770 We see this in her social media was described as a neath sailor, a hostile whole, and so it is imagined through the framework of a hole. 286 00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:09,120 Beowulf is a sailor, I guess for a whole guest. 287 00:33:09,550 --> 00:33:16,810 Of course, you don't really ask for invading territory and this ties in to the way in which marriage of all that has he represents the dragon. 288 00:33:17,770 --> 00:33:23,110 I'm worried about this whole piece praised for the and its efforts to encourage sympathy for the Dragon. 289 00:33:23,590 --> 00:33:29,350 I hope this translation creates a cross connection between the grandmother and the Dragon by imagining 290 00:33:29,350 --> 00:33:37,090 them both as female characters whose homes have been invaded when animals enters the as she translates. 291 00:33:37,570 --> 00:33:44,340 Yes, she felt his presence in her room and knew a man from the above was invading love. 292 00:33:44,950 --> 00:33:51,400 And that's what really in the struggle she is had happening. And that's a really interesting moment because in the original old English, 293 00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:57,400 the poet actually uses the male pronoun and says on to say, So he discards. 294 00:33:58,030 --> 00:34:00,340 And Hadley happily translates, Yes. 295 00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:11,830 She credits reinstating a female pronoun and couching that discovery as a kind of emotional recognition rather than just a ban on sexual slavery. 296 00:34:12,070 --> 00:34:18,100 That kind of knowledge and some critics have interpreted that use of male pronouns 297 00:34:18,100 --> 00:34:23,020 in this section as indications of the poet's discomfort with my mother's gender. 298 00:34:23,230 --> 00:34:31,780 Only about I try to rule the whole in his way of talking slightly sidesteps the issue of gender. 299 00:34:31,780 --> 00:34:42,670 My having my having that creature perceived that smiles of some of those questions when it comes to the stealing of the cup from the Dragon sword, 300 00:34:43,180 --> 00:34:47,139 I think deliberately gender switches the dragon in the old English. 301 00:34:47,140 --> 00:34:49,900 The passage where the thief steals the cup, it's half damaged, 302 00:34:50,110 --> 00:34:58,870 but it probably reads that he was busy at night while sleeping as a result of the thief captor or cutting on people. 303 00:34:58,870 --> 00:35:02,770 I learned that he is older than me, swollen with rage. 304 00:35:03,070 --> 00:35:10,040 Grendel was missing a broken arm Early in the poem, Tolkien translates this The dragon did not, after in silence, 305 00:35:10,050 --> 00:35:16,310 that albeit he had been cheated in his sleep by the thieves cutting, and that the legal that he was wroth. 306 00:35:16,330 --> 00:35:20,049 Indeed, this sense of trickery is even more poignant. 307 00:35:20,050 --> 00:35:23,500 It had this obsession because she could already the anger, 308 00:35:23,650 --> 00:35:29,830 but the fear and the shame but women might feel when attacked in their own homes, she translates. 309 00:35:30,100 --> 00:35:34,989 She rose, raging, grieving, though to cry out was to confess. 310 00:35:34,990 --> 00:35:45,400 She'd been stripped while sleeping. Later, when the properties described sleeping upon it thought that it's more than just an alehouse and a stone, 311 00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:49,180 a combination of house of ancient treasures. 312 00:35:49,810 --> 00:35:58,000 The treasure port is a bet highlighting the personal, even gender response to which the dragon and certainly Grendel's mother subjected the poet. 313 00:35:58,570 --> 00:36:03,850 And I really love this passage because it has little hints of Tolkien as he writes, 314 00:36:03,850 --> 00:36:11,860 The fault was more than a treasury, piles of preciousness nested beneath the coils of the sword servant. 315 00:36:12,190 --> 00:36:17,680 It was immense. And of course, Precious is called out for the sake of Tolkien. 316 00:36:18,290 --> 00:36:24,339 Why? She describes the thief who wrapped trembling fingers around the first small shining skin. 317 00:36:24,340 --> 00:36:29,860 He found sweat that also feels to me like a knot to build on the ring. 318 00:36:30,850 --> 00:36:40,060 And so King's influence as a theorist to play with translation was certainly in Hadley's mind when she worked on her version In her introduction. 319 00:36:40,240 --> 00:36:46,600 She goes from talking all of us by criticism, his remarks on how to translate for the poem. 320 00:36:47,230 --> 00:36:54,570 So she quotes Tolkien, asserting that if you wish to translate, not rewrite fables translated, not rewrite. 321 00:36:54,580 --> 00:37:00,370 So he says, your language must be literary and traditional, not because it is not a long one, 322 00:37:00,490 --> 00:37:04,570 it's how it was made or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient, 323 00:37:05,290 --> 00:37:13,360 but because the diction about was poetical, archaic, artificial, if you will, in the day when the poem was made. 324 00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:20,530 And how do you comments in response to this that Tolkien and I wouldn't have 325 00:37:20,530 --> 00:37:25,210 agreed when it comes to the sort of language required for translation of Beowulf, 326 00:37:25,660 --> 00:37:30,610 but sections of literary, traditional language very widely, depending on who's doing the scene. 327 00:37:31,060 --> 00:37:34,270 And so he had a lot of things to call you, but I do share. 328 00:37:34,630 --> 00:37:38,950 But we agree that they are the originals. That's what they must be reckoned with. 329 00:37:39,970 --> 00:37:43,050 We see Tolkien is like like Kings of the Cool, 330 00:37:44,500 --> 00:37:51,610 and it's so surprising in some ways you have this language of sort of knights in medieval chivalry, but isn't available to be called a pre. 331 00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:58,060 Tolkien sees a kind of incipient should our culture at play in the power? 332 00:37:58,180 --> 00:38:02,740 He thinks they will have the complication with the Knights of the Round table. 333 00:38:03,130 --> 00:38:06,990 But of course all modern English word is not as capacious as the old school. 334 00:38:07,690 --> 00:38:16,840 So I think Tolkien partly draws on that lexical tradition in knights and lights and questing and partly to give us that texture. 335 00:38:17,830 --> 00:38:23,260 I think he is right that Tolkien probably would not have agreed with her approach to translation, 336 00:38:23,770 --> 00:38:34,870 not least because a few sentences earlier in that same essay, Tolkien declared a warning against colloquialism and false modesty and Tolkien. 337 00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:40,959 I think that comes through partly because he slightly fears that part of the language of modernity. 338 00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:49,450 But of course the courage of the trivial might be, as he calls it, to a self-conscious, self-conscious and often silly laughter. 339 00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:53,620 He says the things we are dealing with here are serious. 340 00:38:53,890 --> 00:39:03,340 Moving on full of high salt tots sentences, the English word that we find in Chaucer were a sort of moral doctrine out of the sovereignty. 341 00:39:04,380 --> 00:39:10,960 Now, she argues that her modern style is at the service of poetic voice and communicative clarity. 342 00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:15,850 And she argues for the power of modern slang or new cultural context. 343 00:39:16,810 --> 00:39:23,770 She states that language is a living thing. What it all means. It means bones and dots and fossils here next to some newborns. 344 00:39:24,010 --> 00:39:28,450 I was interested in contemporary slang on India, as I am in New York. 345 00:39:29,050 --> 00:39:35,050 As she says, if you're looking for a language of nice romance, you can find plenty of other translations. 346 00:39:35,620 --> 00:39:43,910 Now, has this translation is that, if you will, probably no is famous for its translation of the opening of Front Row row. 347 00:39:44,050 --> 00:39:52,810 How will we still know how to speak of kings? In the old days, everyone knew what men were brave, bold, glory bound only stories. 348 00:39:52,810 --> 00:39:58,730 Now some display date and song hoarded for hungry time, I think. 349 00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:07,870 How do you just write? Tell me. Have so many got the feel of the original and the alliterative pattern with the phrase the poem The Glory Bound. 350 00:40:08,140 --> 00:40:12,190 She sounding inspired a song that's haunted for how many times. 351 00:40:12,550 --> 00:40:15,700 But she also sets out staked out new territory. 352 00:40:16,750 --> 00:40:18,530 They might be on these stories now. 353 00:40:18,580 --> 00:40:25,840 She said to silence all present moments, a moment where she fears that perhaps we don't know how to speak about things anymore. 354 00:40:26,050 --> 00:40:34,930 I totally try to write a bit on lies about what men are all now running around involved in the time they were. 355 00:40:35,620 --> 00:40:43,870 What was all they know? I mean, my heart, particularly at the moment, given the conflict war taking place in the world. 356 00:40:44,970 --> 00:40:52,600 While the opening role also enables having to do is that she talks about the way that to her how it feels like a 357 00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:59,320 sort of competitive conversation I've often heard between men the kinds of conversations that men have the balls, 358 00:40:59,620 --> 00:41:05,020 she says. Competition that hides aggression between behind brotherly bonds. 359 00:41:05,380 --> 00:41:10,150 She says depending on tone, Rove can run the family for fun. 360 00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:17,410 And she repeats the word other places in the pub where she suggested it reminds us of the ways in which men can afford or deny 361 00:41:17,410 --> 00:41:26,410 one another power safety by using coded language to raise women from power structures by speaking culturally only to other men. 362 00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:33,880 Hadley's role on the original poet squat is a call to attention, but whose attention? 363 00:41:34,270 --> 00:41:38,530 All we paradoxically, all included, is that we, all of us, do. 364 00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:46,510 We share these particular stories, all all the other stories for which we are not yet given proper attention. 365 00:41:48,010 --> 00:41:53,220 Until his comments on translation were also a catalyst for Scottish progress. 366 00:41:53,490 --> 00:42:01,700 And with Morgan. And his discussion of style in the introduction to his 1952 translation, 367 00:42:01,700 --> 00:42:09,050 which was one of the first translations by a practising poet published via poetry publication. 368 00:42:09,810 --> 00:42:13,969 If you want to go away, we talking about translating Bible. 369 00:42:13,970 --> 00:42:21,560 I also really recommend. And Morgan's opening is also thinking about translation. 370 00:42:22,630 --> 00:42:28,490 And Morgan tuned in to the poem's discussion of Holmes social relationships to for a different reason, 371 00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:34,790 to having Edwin Morgan describe his translation as his unwritten walk away. 372 00:42:35,420 --> 00:42:42,620 He translated it. We came back from the Second World War after he was finding it very difficult to access his poetic voice again. 373 00:42:43,260 --> 00:42:49,809 And his translation is wonderful for its humane and compassionate depiction of the camaraderie of thousands of soldiers. 374 00:42:49,810 --> 00:42:56,960 It's already moving in places as Morgan counters Tolkien's arguments about modernity for two reasons. 375 00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:04,280 Firstly, he says, while it is indeed true that the original section of the poem was a register reason for the poetry, 376 00:43:05,030 --> 00:43:08,120 even if not, how started is lost in translation. 377 00:43:08,870 --> 00:43:12,260 He says, quote, The background of the poem cannot be modernised. 378 00:43:12,590 --> 00:43:18,050 The social systems, the entertainments, the supernatural beings, the battles in the weapons, 379 00:43:18,410 --> 00:43:22,700 and in the inescapable, inescapable bedrock vocabulary of Caine. 380 00:43:23,030 --> 00:43:29,839 Lord rightly, goals get immediate codes of male talking and barriers that the 20th century reader will find 381 00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:36,470 enough that is remote from his own experience without any super radical linguistic quantum crank. 382 00:43:37,790 --> 00:43:46,790 So we can all do without the mommy pressing and all of that, 383 00:43:47,300 --> 00:43:57,080 all of that is that all of that dignity and all kinds of sense of what about the past is that without it needs to be added in the language of his use. 384 00:43:57,890 --> 00:44:04,969 I'm fundamentally for the moment, he argues that quote was that of the tradition of the original poetry may have been the 385 00:44:04,970 --> 00:44:10,790 translator's duty is as much to slit his own age as it is to represent the voice of past age. 386 00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:14,209 These are indeed equal tasks, he suggests. 387 00:44:14,210 --> 00:44:20,630 The communication must take place. The nerves must sometimes take over and flush out immediately. 388 00:44:20,630 --> 00:44:29,720 So that's what the translation is doing its job when you read it and it just feels as long as the original I would be, I would agree more. 389 00:44:29,720 --> 00:44:34,879 I think if a translation doesn't in some way light a kind of beaker within us and 390 00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:41,150 give us a sense of the feeling for the passive voice from the past has been ignited, 391 00:44:41,720 --> 00:44:46,040 that it isn't necessarily working as a poetic translation. 392 00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:53,120 I think that's something that the original poet knew and of the he recognised what it looks like. 393 00:44:53,120 --> 00:45:01,030 It's fascinating how his discussion of the structure of in impulses is increasing, especially if he picks up this one. 394 00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:05,900 But he says might be the only potential weakness in the power of this organisation. 395 00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:10,640 And this is what he calls the lonely capitulation, the record labels. 396 00:45:10,910 --> 00:45:20,690 So this is what I also call a regular mother, and he has up to the easiest table that whole section of being lonely. 397 00:45:21,330 --> 00:45:27,320 His he says, Wow. It was like to figure out exactly how that ally brilliant, how do they go about it? 398 00:45:27,330 --> 00:45:35,629 Said, Well, let me tell you. And he's talking only about the old schools and tells him about political situation, about the marriage alliance. 399 00:45:35,630 --> 00:45:42,260 It's going to take place between Friday morning and another time he's feeling about the work. 400 00:45:42,260 --> 00:45:45,930 So he gets a really interesting sort of political insight from Magnus. 401 00:45:46,610 --> 00:45:54,709 I'm told he suggests that in this week she calls it that it's coming down to older folk time. 402 00:45:54,710 --> 00:45:58,540 But seriously, I was working with a talking. 403 00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:04,820 It also likes this. I've seen comments about the value of Fables bringing the tale of Grendel back to the patrons, 404 00:46:05,390 --> 00:46:09,530 he says, as they will, Samson would like soul and tells his story. 405 00:46:09,860 --> 00:46:18,590 He sets his fleet firm again in the land of his own people and is no longer in danger of appearing at the end of each and every adventure. 406 00:46:19,310 --> 00:46:22,400 Exiled traveller and slave. What do you hope? He said? 407 00:46:22,400 --> 00:46:29,930 He told me back to the straight, back to his discussion of the bipartite structure of the poem in these two parts. 408 00:46:30,380 --> 00:46:37,240 But what he recognises here is the importance of bringing the story hope of opening a door to want 409 00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:44,150 to help inspire images through which Beowulf can set into each kingdom to step into our world. 410 00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:48,709 When the plot in Tolkien's traditional language or in the modern dress of recent 411 00:46:48,710 --> 00:46:53,410 translators is the fabulous allegory and the illustration of all this in critics, 412 00:46:53,780 --> 00:47:02,889 Tolkien described a man who had. Is it a field in which it's an accumulation of old stone halves of an old hole and some of that to be 413 00:47:02,890 --> 00:47:08,710 used in building a house in which you have actually lived and some of which should be built into a tower. 414 00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:14,020 But the nonsensical about how without looking for hidden carvings and inscriptions, 415 00:47:14,350 --> 00:47:21,850 all these other animals went around for all this time, building material from and scrambling around in the soil. 416 00:47:22,090 --> 00:47:27,220 Not only do they neglect to expose themselves, they miss the point of the tower itself. 417 00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:34,270 And Tolkien says from the top of that tower, the man had been able to look out a policy. 418 00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:40,780 That was the point of the tower. You can see the sea from it's almost half a mile sometimes. 419 00:47:40,810 --> 00:47:42,730 Tolkien spoke of focussed attention, 420 00:47:43,180 --> 00:47:49,320 neglected parts of the poem to which we are now responding urgently to the present day, such as the role of the sun. 421 00:47:49,810 --> 00:47:56,950 I do think that a lasting legacy of his work on the Current has been to open up really important vistas and viewpoints 422 00:47:57,160 --> 00:48:04,000 from which we can look out to the sea and think about what we learn from seeing the world from the storyteller. 423 00:48:04,180 --> 00:48:10,000 A fable and a deep rooted drone. Hadley concludes the introduction to her translation with a similar image. 424 00:48:10,420 --> 00:48:11,499 She views the poems, 425 00:48:11,500 --> 00:48:20,650 various stories as lighthouses and conjuring up an image of poring over maps of the world when she was a child with a Happy Dragons mornings. 426 00:48:21,100 --> 00:48:28,810 She writes, quote, All that imaginary map I added story lighthouses that I want to look over here at lighthouses. 427 00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:34,510 Here is a safe of how I feel about this evolved. Here is a spot to watch out for Out here. 428 00:48:34,510 --> 00:48:41,380 What happens out here with the stories of those dragons on those heroes and more on their stories that haven't yet been reckoned with. 429 00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:44,830 Stories hidden within the stories that we think we know. 430 00:48:45,220 --> 00:48:49,210 It takes you, readers, writers and souls to find them. 431 00:48:50,140 --> 00:48:56,230 I think the legacy of Torquay's work on my TO has been to encourage us to take steps onto 432 00:48:56,230 --> 00:49:02,830 that road that leads ever on into and through the original Bible and insurance stories. 433 00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:07,600 Tolkien might be naively a medievalist. He made me a creative person. 434 00:49:07,930 --> 00:49:11,020 He gave me permission to make the dragons my own. 435 00:49:11,350 --> 00:49:13,810 To become a shield titan and a world hoarder. 436 00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:23,410 I'll always be eternally grateful to him for the rich and perilous imaginative worlds that he opened up here in Oxford and in Middle-Earth by being. 437 00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:35,450 I.